(Radio Iowa) – No charges will be filed after the parents of a five-year-old complained a Humboldt School District bus driver had bruised their son’s neck. The Oleson’s live in Webster County and that’s where the incident occurred. The family felt the Humboldt School District didn’t take the situation seriously enough.

Webster County Sheriff Luke Fleener issued a statement and said after his deputies took a report and investigated the matter they then referred to the Webster County Attorney’s Office, which said determined there was not sufficient evidence to sustain a criminal conviction.

(Radio Iowa) – A Saturday morning crash in Fort Dodge left half a dozen people injured and knocked out power to part of the city. Fort Dodge Police say a man driving a truck had a medical episode, hit a utility pole and then collided with a S-U-V. The S-U-V was carrying four children as passengers.

All six people in the two vehicles suffered injuries and were taken to the Fort Dodge hospital for treatment. Police have not released the names of the drivers.

Police in Shenandoah report officers were dispatched Saturday to an area in the 200 block of N. Monroe Street, for a report of a woman in an unoccupied residence without the owner’s permission. Prior to officers’ arrival, the woman, who apparently realized she was being watched, proceeded across the street to another residence. Officers located 28-year-old Joscelyn Coleman, of Shenandoah, hiding in a garage in the 200 block of N. Monroe. Coleman was subsequently arrested for Attempted Burglary in the 3rd Degree, an aggravated misdemeanor, and Felony Burglary in the 3rd Degree.

While being processed at the Shenandoah Police Department, Coleman attempted to flee the building and had to be subdued. She was additionally charged with Interference with Official Acts, and transported to the Shenandoah Medical Center to be medically released, before being transported to the Page County Jail, where her bond was set at $7,300.

Stogdill

The Shenandoah P-D reports also, on May 18th, an Officer with the Shenandoah Police Department observed a person he knew to have active warrants, walking past the police station. 38-year-old Lyle Francis Stogdill, of Shenandoah, was arrested on both Page and Fremont County warrants, charging him with four separate counts of Probation Violation. Stogdill was additionally charged by Shenandoah Police, with Possession of Controlled Substance, a Class D Felony. The substance was discovered on his person during his arrest. Stogdill’s bond was set at $12,000.

(Radio Iowa) – Memorial Day isn’t for another week yet but law enforcement agencies across the state have launched a special traffic enforcement effort (that begins today, May 24th) that will run for two full weeks. Genie Sterbenz, spokeswoman for the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, says the familiar program is focused on getting Iowans to wear their seatbelts.”The Click It or Ticket campaign is a campaign that runs nationally for officers to be out there enforcing the laws and to remind people that it’s easy to buckle their safety belts,” Sterbenz says. “It’s a great way to save everyone’s life.”

While fewer people were driving during the height of the pandemic last year, statistics show those who were on the roads tended to take more risks.  “During the month of May in 2020, Iowa had 2,988 crashes and of those crashes, 167 individuals were injured because they were unbelted,” Sterbenz says. “As we all know, by buckling up, those injuries may have been prevented.”

It’s expected to be a busy two weeks as law officers statewide concentrate on pulling over lawbreakers to make the roads safer for everyone else. “They’ll be watching for the seatbelts,” she says, “but they’ll also be watching for impaired driving and speeding and other violations that we know cause crashes.”

The latest Click It or Ticket campaign will run from May 24th through June 6th.

Iowa’s Auditor of State, Rob Sand has announced there will be an outdoor Townhall meeting in Audubon County as part of his 99 county tour for 2021. The event takes place 1-p.m. Friday, May 28th at Albert the Bull Park, and it is open to the public.

Auditor Sand will be talking about what the Iowa Auditor’s office has worked on over the past year and a half, and will be available to answer questions about those audits.

(Radio Iowa) – The C-E-O of the Iowa Restaurant Association says updated information suggests fewer restaurants and bars in Iowa have closed during the pandemic than was expected. Jessica Dunker says initial estimates indicated about a thousand restaurants and bars in Iowa that were operating in March of 2020 would close. “We’re projecting now that it’s probably going to be closer to 700, which is more in the 12% range,” Dunker says, “and we’ll take that.”

Dunker says restaurants and bars fared better here than in other states for a combination of reasons, including state grants along with federal Paycheck Protection Program grants. Iowa restaurants and bars were also allowed to reopen for in-person service sooner than in other states.  “There’s pent up demand. Our biggest problem is we can’t find people to work,” Dunker says. “But the customers are coming out and summer is summer, so we’re optimistic.”

Dunker says part of the workforce problem is that 20 years ago, just over a third of high-school students had a part-time job, whereas today it’s about 20 percent. “We have to get creative as an industry to attract people into those first jobs,” Dunker says. “One-in-three people had their first job with us. We’d like one-in-three Iowans who are 16 today to have a job with us.”

Dunker says another factor is that many of the employees who were laid off a year ago when Iowa restaurants and bars were shutdown because of the pandemic are not returning “We lost people — great customer service people — to phone jobs, to Amazon, to everyone because everyone was hiring and you love people with great people skills and that’s us,” Dunker says, “so we were easy pickings.”

Dunker made her comments during a recent appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S.